ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. 213 HUMILIBUS DAT GRATIAN.-Peacham about 1600. THE mountains huge, that seem to check the sky, So God oft times denies unto the great The gifts of nature, or his heavenly grace, And those that high in honor's chair are set Do feel their wants; when men of meaner place, Although they lack the others' golden spring, Perhaps are blest above the richest king. ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. - Milnes. I'm not where I was yesterday, I have lost a thought, that many a year To my inmost mind, by night or day, I have lost a hope, that many a year Looked far on a gleaming way, When the walls of life were closing round, And the sky was sombre gray. For long, too long, in distant climes A frail and casual intercourse And felt no void, for my heart was full And now I was close to my native shores, His spirit was in that homeward wind, For what were to me my native shores, But that they held the scene Where my youth's most genial flowers had blown, And affection's root had been? I thought, how should I see him first, How should our hands first meet; Within his room, upon the stair, At the corner of the street? I thought, where should I hear him first, O, what is life but a sum of love, Weeds be for those that are left behind, TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. And now how mighty a sum of love No, I'm not what I was yesterday, 215 TO A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY.-Milton. LADY, that in the prime of earliest youth Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure. TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.- Keble. "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?"-MATTHEW Xviii. 21. WHAT liberty so glad and gay, The dreary sounds of crowded earth, The snow-clad peaks of rosy light Two ways alone his roving eye For age may onward go, Or in the azure deep on high, Or darksome mere below. O blessed restraint! more blesséd range! Too soon the happy child His nook of homely thought will change For life's seducing wild: Too soon his altered day-dreams show While of his narrowing heart each year It must be so; else wherefore falls While from his pardoning cross he calls, "O, spare, as I have spared?" THE BEGGAR. By our own niggard rule we try Yes, ransomed sinner! wouldst thou know How dearly to embrace thy foe, Look where thou hop'st to live: When thou hast told those isles of light, Then in their solemn pageant learn 217 THE BEGGAR.-J. R. Lowell. A BEGGAR through the world am I, Rounded with leafy gracefulness, Old oak, give me, That the world's blasts may round me blow, And I yield gently to and fro, While my stout-hearted trunk below, And firm-set roots, unmovéd be. |